I met a friend for a cuppa this morning (an amazing friend who is ED knowledgeable and all round awesome) and I told her what was going on. I told her I was buying binge food, I told her I was throwing up in plastic bags in my room, I told her I was cancelling plans so I could binge, I told her that I had been discharged from ED service for lack of motivation but that I was dying to change I just didn’t know how. I just don’t know how. I know all the theory, I can tell you strategy after strategy but I am still bulimic and I am miserable.

She thinks I need to be this honest with the ED service about the bulimia. We figured out that might be why I started to withdraw from it. Writing food diaries and being weighed is awful enough when you’re restricting and losing weight but when you’re binging and gaining weight it is just pure torture (I’ll save my rant about bulimia being a second class eating disorder for another time, but it does come back to this a lot). I have been at this point before, when I swap from restricting to binging and I just don’t want to face up to it, but maybe this is what I need to do differently to move me forward. I need to do something different and this is my best guess for the moment. I have a doc appointment soon so I will talk to her about starting back (service said I could re-refer myself at anytime- wonder if they knew this is what I would do?!). I have to try something right?

I’m sitting here eating jelly babies and drinking diet coke and laughing at myself for thinking this isn’t going to turn into a binge. I know that this is one of the moments that I need to conquer. Firstly, I shouldn’t have bought jelly babies as I know how that ends. I could have made a better choice at that moment. But I didn’t, I succumbed to my bulimia pilot and suddenly I have in my possession a jelly babies, a pack of biscuits and a spotted dick and custard pudding (this was on special offer- I don’t even know if I like it but I reckoned it will come up easy enough- isn’t that shocking? What little regard I have for food and for myself).

I could make a better choice now, I could stop eating. But I know I won’t, I’ve eaten too many jelly babies that I’m going to have to (choosing to) purge anyway so I might as well keep going. I’m so annoyed at myself but I’m still going to do it. I know it’s a choice but honestly, I do not feel like I’m choosing here, I feel like the ED monster has all control and is going to win anyway I might as well just give in now. Sigh.

I’m going to need to toughen up if I have any chance of beating this thing. Tomorrow is a new day…

I was discharged from the ED service today. Partly by choice, partly because there is not much more they can do for me when I’m not playing ball and trying to help myself. I had been seeing a lovely counsellor: she was practical, solution-focused, sympathetic, knowledgeable, understanding…everything you could ask for in a support service really. She knew her stuff, and she taught me everything I would need to know about recovering from bulimia, but it still wasn’t enough. I sat there in front of this lovely person offering me incredible support, and all I had to do was say ‘yes I want to keep trying’. But I didn’t. I wouldn’t.